A food and beverage trademark infringement case handled by Shine Legal Associates, Lahore — involving deliberate brand imitation, deceptive trade dress, and the protection of a restaurant chain’s registered name and signature identity across multiple cities.

Practice Area	Trademark Infringement, Trade Dress, Passing Off, F&B Law
Industry	Food & Beverage — Restaurant Chain & Franchise
Jurisdiction	Pakistan — Intellectual Property Tribunal & High Court Lahore
Duration	9 months (instruction to permanent injunction)
Outcome	Permanent injunction granted, infringing outlets rebranded, damages awarded, franchise agreement voided
Firm	Shine Legal Associates — shinelegalassociates.com

Our client had spent a decade building one of Lahore’s more recognisable desi food chains. Starting from a single outlet in Gulberg in 2013, the business had grown to seven locations across Lahore, Faisalabad, and Gujranwala by the time this dispute arose. The name was registered as a trademark. The logo — a stylised calligraphic rendering of the restaurant’s Urdu name — was distinctive and consistently used across signage, packaging, delivery bags, social media, and uniforms. The brand meant something. In Lahore’s crowded restaurant market, that takes years to build.

In 2023, a former employee — someone who had worked as a floor manager at one of the client’s Lahore outlets for roughly three years before leaving — opened a restaurant in Rawalpindi under a name that was, to put it plainly, the same name with a single letter changed. The font on the signboard was identical. The colour palette — a specific combination of deep green and gold — matched exactly. The menu layout, the packaging design, and even the tagline were lifted wholesale from our client’s brand materials.

Within four months of opening, this individual had expanded to two more outlets, both in cities where our client did not yet have a presence but was actively planning expansion. He had also begun describing his operation as a franchise of our client’s chain in conversations with suppliers and on at least one occasion in a meeting with a potential commercial landlord — claiming, falsely, that he held an authorised franchise agreement.

Customers were confused. Multiple reviews on food delivery platforms praised the new outlets and referenced our client’s original restaurants by name. Several suppliers who had dealt with our client’s chain began receiving enquiries from the copycat operation, assuming the relationship was authorised. Our client’s planned expansion into Rawalpindi — already in advanced planning stages — was now facing the prospect of entering a market where a near-identical brand had already established a foothold.

Food and beverage trademark cases carry a specific set of complications that distinguish them from infringement in other sectors. Several issues required careful attention here:

• The single-letter variation in the name was designed to create plausible deniability. The infringing party would predictably argue that the names were different and that no confusion was possible — a defence that required us to demonstrate, with evidence, that real consumer confusion was in fact occurring
• Trade dress protection — covering the colour scheme, signage layout, menu design, and packaging — is less well-developed in Pakistani IP jurisprudence than straightforward name trademark protection. We needed to build this aspect of the case carefully, drawing on both domestic precedent and persuasive authority from comparable jurisdictions
• The false franchise claim added a separate dimension. Beyond trademark infringement, the infringing party was making active misrepresentations about a commercial relationship that did not exist — this touched on fraud and potentially the franchising regulations under Pakistani commercial law
• The geographic spread of the infringing outlets — across Rawalpindi and two other cities — meant that relief limited to Lahore would be commercially useless. We needed national injunctive relief from the outset
• Speed was critical. Our client’s Rawalpindi expansion plans were contingent on entering that market as the recognised original. Every month the copycat operated there, the harder that became

Before filing anything, we spent three weeks building the confusion evidence. This was non-negotiable — the single-letter defence would only work if we could not show actual confusion in the market. We could not afford to let that argument gain traction.

We commissioned mystery shopper visits to each of the infringing outlets, with investigators asking staff directly whether the restaurant was affiliated with our client’s chain. In every case, staff either confirmed the affiliation or gave deliberately ambiguous answers. We collected and archived food delivery platform reviews that explicitly referenced our client’s original brand in the context of the infringing outlets. We documented supplier conversations where the copycat operation had introduced itself using language that implied authorisation.

Every piece of evidence was timestamped, witnessed, and compiled into a structured confusion dossier that would form the spine of our injunction application.

Pakistani courts have generally treated trade dress as falling within the broader passing off framework rather than as a standalone statutory claim. This actually gave us more flexibility — we did not need to fit the facts into a rigid statutory definition but rather demonstrate that the overall commercial impression created by the infringing outlets was calculated to deceive.

We engaged a brand design expert to produce a comparative analysis of the two operations — covering signage dimensions and typography, colour specifications (referenced against Pantone standards to demonstrate exact matching rather than mere similarity), packaging design elements, menu layout structure, and uniform styling. The analysis concluded that the probability of independent identical design choices across all these elements was effectively zero. This was deliberate copying, not coincidence.

We filed before the Intellectual Property Tribunal in Lahore, seeking interim relief that explicitly covered all existing and future outlets of the infringing operation across Pakistan — not just Lahore. This framing mattered. A geographically limited injunction would have been commercially inadequate and would have signalled to the infringing party that simply operating outside Lahore was a viable workaround.

The interim injunction application was supported by the trademark registration certificates, the confusion dossier, the design expert’s comparative analysis, and evidence of the false franchise representations. We also submitted a commercial impact assessment — prepared with our client’s accountants — quantifying the prospective harm to the Rawalpindi expansion from continued operation of the copycat outlets.

The Tribunal granted the interim injunction within six weeks of filing, covering all outlets nationally. The order required the infringing party to cease using the name, the logo, the colour scheme, and any other element of the trade dress pending final determination. He was also required to issue corrections to any supplier or third party to whom he had represented that his operation was authorised or franchised by our client.

In parallel with the IP Tribunal proceedings, we sent formal legal notices to three commercial landlords and two major food suppliers who had been approached by the infringing party using false franchise claims. These notices documented the falsity of the representations, clarified that no franchise agreement existed or had ever existed, and put those parties on notice that any continuing dealings based on those representations could create legal complications for them.

This served two purposes. It neutralised the commercial ecosystem that the infringing party had been building around the false franchise narrative. And it made continued operation of the infringing outlets practically difficult — landlords and suppliers who had been misled became significantly less cooperative once they understood the legal position.

The interim injunction, combined with the commercial disruption caused by the supplier and landlord notices, shifted the infringing party’s position from combative to negotiable within two months. Discussions opened through his legal representative.

Our client’s position was clear from the beginning: there was no commercial arrangement to be negotiated. The only acceptable outcome was a permanent cessation of all infringing activity, full rebranding of every outlet, a signed acknowledgment that no franchise relationship existed or exists, and compensation for the harm caused. We did not treat this as a licensing opportunity — because doing so would have legitimised the infringement and set a precedent that copying first and negotiating later was a viable strategy.

When negotiations stalled on the damages figure, we pressed forward to a final hearing. The Tribunal’s final order came nine months after our initial instruction.

Several arguments proved decisive over the course of the proceedings:

• Deceptive similarity under the Trade Marks Ordinance 2001: The test is not whether the marks are identical but whether they are sufficiently similar that a consumer of ordinary intelligence and imperfect recollection could be confused. A single-letter variation in a brand name, combined with identical visual presentation, passes that threshold comfortably — particularly in the food sector where customers often refer to restaurants by visual impression and reputation rather than precise spelling.
• Passing off through trade dress imitation: The comprehensive copying of colour scheme, typography, packaging, and menu design — even if each individual element could theoretically be argued to be unprotected — creates a composite commercial impression that amounts to a representation calculated to deceive. Pakistani courts have consistently followed the English passing off framework on this point.
• Enhanced confusion in the franchise context: The infringing party’s active representations of a franchise relationship materially worsened the confusion beyond what the name similarity alone would have created. Courts treat deliberate misrepresentation of a commercial relationship as aggravating conduct that strengthens both the merits of the claim and the case for exemplary damages.

Prior employment as evidence of deliberate copying: The infringing party’s three-year employment history with our client was highly relevant. He had access to brand guidelines, supplier lists, operational manuals, and confidential business information during his employment. The precision of the copying — matching specific Pantone colours, replicating menu layouts exactly — was only explicable by reference to that access. Deliberate copying informed both liability and the quantum of damages.

The Intellectual Property Tribunal’s final order, delivered nine months after our initial instruction, provided the following relief:

• A permanent injunction restraining the infringing party from using the copied name, any deceptively similar variant, the trade dress elements, or any representation of affiliation with our client’s chain — across Pakistan, without geographic limitation
• An order requiring complete rebranding of all three infringing outlets within 60 days, including removal and replacement of all signage, packaging, uniforms, and digital assets
• A formal declaration that no franchise or licensing relationship of any kind existed between the parties — specifically designed to be circulated to the suppliers and landlords who had received false representations
• Compensatory damages of PKR 2.8 million, assessed on the basis of lost expansion opportunity in Rawalpindi and reputational harm
• Exemplary damages of PKR 800,000, awarded specifically on account of the deliberate and calculated nature of the copying, the exploitation of prior employment access, and the false franchise representations
• Full legal costs awarded to our client

All three infringing outlets were rebranded within the 60-day window. Our client’s Rawalpindi expansion launched six months after the final order, entering the market as the clearly established original. Within the first quarter of Rawalpindi operations, customer recognition of the brand — driven partly by the publicity surrounding the resolved dispute — exceeded projections.

The food and beverage sector is one of the most heavily targeted industries for brand imitation in Pakistan, and several patterns from this case repeat across the sector constantly:

• Former employees are your highest-risk infringers. Someone who worked in your operation for years knows your systems, your suppliers, your margins, your expansion plans, and exactly what makes your brand work. Standard employment contracts in Pakistan’s F&B sector almost never include post-employment non-compete or non-imitation clauses covering brand elements. They should. If you are operating a recognisable food brand and your contracts do not address this, you are carrying a risk you may not have priced.
• A single-letter change in a name is not a defence — it is a tactic. Courts evaluate consumer confusion in the real world, not on paper. The question is whether an ordinary customer, exercising ordinary attention, could be misled. In the food sector, where reputation travels by word of mouth and visual impression, near-identical names combined with identical presentation are routinely found to infringe.
• Trade dress is protectable even without a separate registered right. Many F&B brands in Pakistan invest heavily in distinctive visual identity — colour combinations, packaging, signage style — without understanding that these elements are legally protectable. You do not need a separate registered design for each element. Consistent use over time, combined with evidence of consumer recognition, is often sufficient to establish protectable trade dress.
• Do not treat infringement as a licensing opportunity. Offering a licence to an infringer — unless you were genuinely planning to expand through franchising anyway — sends entirely the wrong signal. It tells the market that copying your brand first, then negotiating from a position of established presence, is a viable strategy. The appropriate response to deliberate infringement is enforcement, not accommodation.
• Move before the infringer builds roots. In the F&B sector, brand confusion compounds quickly. Customer habits form fast, supplier relationships get established, and online reviews accumulate. An infringer who has been operating for two years is significantly harder to dislodge than one who has been operating for two months — not legally, but commercially. The moment you discover credible infringement, the clock is running against you.

Shine Legal Associates is a law firm based in Lahore, Pakistan. We advise food and beverage businesses, restaurant chains, franchise operators, and consumer brands on trademark registration, brand protection, IP enforcement, and franchise law. We understand the commercial realities of the F&B sector and structure our legal strategy around protecting the business, not just winning arguments.

If a competitor is copying your restaurant’s name, visual identity, or claiming a franchise relationship that does not exist, contact us. The earlier we are involved, the more options are available and the faster the resolution.

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